


Far Side of the Bed

by scarletseeker113



Series: There were days when each hour was a war I fought to survive [1]
Category: Marvel Avengers Movies Universe, The Avengers - All Fandoms
Genre: F/M, and Nat is too to be honest, and that's what matters, but they're together, in which Clint is going through some crap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-11
Updated: 2012-09-11
Packaged: 2017-11-14 00:27:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/509382
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scarletseeker113/pseuds/scarletseeker113
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the battle of Manhattan Clint and and Natasha keep moving, because that's all there is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Far Side of the Bed

**Author's Note:**

> The title of the series is from Owl City's new song Embers.

“Do you know what it’s like to be unmade?” Clint says, and his voice is low, thick with memories and pain.

“You know that I do,” Natasha returns, and her voice is filled with memories that she isn’t sure are real and days of inexplicable torture before she escaped.

“Natasha.”

He whispers her name, and so many unspoken days are behind it. The day he made a different call. The day she smiled at him for the first time- it had taken months. The day she saved his life, and he knew. He _knew_ that she would continue saving his life, as long as it took.

Later, after Captain America has left and before they get on the plane, she tells him that Coulson is dead.

“What?” Clint asks, bracing his hand against the doorway.

“I’m sorry,” she offers, she knows it’s inadequate, but it’s the best she can offer.

Clint takes a moment to breathe. To focus on breathing. Natasha watches him for a moment, and then puts a hand on his arm. Willingly entering into physical contact for him in an open doorway. 

They fly to New York, deciding to try and take down Loki. They are not soldiers, but they do what they can.

When Natasha flies past him with Loki on his tail she calls out to him for help. Stark or Thor would have easily been better choices, they were better equipped to help. But she calls out to him, and he feels the weight of her trust settle deep in his chest, right next to the weight of Coulson’s death.

He chooses an exploding arrow.

He jumps off the building a couple seconds later, out of arrows with aliens converging on him. He crashes through the window and lies there for several minutes, trying to ignore the sharp pain of the way his quiver digs into his back and trying not to feel the deep dull ache that echoes and reverberates throughout his body from crashing into glass.

Natasha figures out how to close the breach. Clint watches as Stark falls out of the sky, not slowing down at all. The metal moves fluidly with his limbs, and for a moment, Clint thinks they are going to loose a member of their team in this battle. But then Hulk comes out of nowhere and catches him. Clint makes his way down to ground level, meeting Natasha there.

He raises his eyebrows at her and she nods. He nods in return. They are both okay. They have survived, they have survived so much more and they will continue.

“Shwarma,” Stark says, as he walks past them.

Natasha raises a delicate eyebrow. 

“Come on,” Starks says authoritatively. “I did just save the world, you can at least eat lunch with me. Or dinner. Or whatever it is.”

Clint smiles at the look on Natasha’s face.

So they go, and when Clint props a leg up on her chair- it still hurts- she doesn’t even say anything. She just looks at him for a long time, and he stares back.

They return to SHEILD headquarters shortly after, and when they walk past Clint’s door, Natasha starts to continue on to her own room.

He catches her hand, and she has a thousand ways to break his grip, a thousand moves she can use to get out of this embrace, but she allows him to pull her in.

They stand together for a while, holding each other.

“Thank you,” Clint says. “For bringing me back.”

“Thank you for bringing me in,” she returns.

 

It take months before the weight of Coulson’s death has lifted from Clint’s chest. Phil had been the one to bring him in, to rescue him from the circus. It takes months and several missions before Clint can breathe again. It’s easier with Natasha.

They’ve changed, inexplicably and yet Clint can sense it.

He feels more comfortable with her now. Enough to the point to where when he can’t breath he sneaks into her room in the middle of the night, and she doesn’t throw knives at him. He sleeps on the far side of her bed when he comes, reasoning that he’s better with distance weapons and she’s better with hand-to-hand combat, so if an intruder comes they’re positioned correctly.

They don’t touch in the middle of the night, they are trained assassins and they don’t cuddle in their sleep on accident. They don’t do it on purpose either.

They’re invited to live in the Avenger’s tower a week after the battle. They’re given their own floors, but they only use Natasha’s. 

No one is stupid enough to comment on it. 

Once morning, when Darcy is making everyone breakfast and complaining about how her ‘superior cooking skills are being taken advantage of and if she doesn’t at least get a new iPod out of this then she’s quitting right here and right now.’

“Natasha will cook for us if you quit, won’t you Natasha?” Stark say, leering at her.

Clint knows immediately that it’s wrong, that Stark has said the wrong thing on the wrong day.

He’s not sure what it is, the sexism, the fact that Stark assumes that she will do whatever she wants or the way he’s obviously dragging his eyes up and down her body like he’s imagining what exactly she can do with it. Probably all three.

Natasha’s hand whips out, ready to slam Stark’s forehead into the counter, but Clint gets there in time, catching her wrist.

“Natasha,” he says again. And once again her name is full of nights they don’t tell anyone about and the unspoken trust between them. He’s asking her not to do this.

“Fine,” she spits, and then she stalks out. 

Clint knows she will head toward the training room.

“Careful,” he says to Tony, who raises his eyebrows in disbelief.

“Or what, you’ll kill me?”

Clint snorts. “She’s got first dibs on your body, we worked out a deal.” 

Tony looks scandalized. Steve looks like he might comment, but thinks better on it and Darcy is grinning. 

Clint walks out, passing Banner who says, “Did I miss something? Natasha looked upset.”

Clint walks down to the training room, and enters it. Natasha flies at him, taking him down on the mat.

They fight for hours, each fine tuning their skills and then afterwards match up their target practice. Her with knives, him with his bow. 

At night he crawls into bed on the side farther from the door, touching his bow that lays next to the bed, making sure it’s there. Clint knows Nat’s checking the knives underneath her pillow. 

They don’t talk. They don’t touch. They just sleep.

 

Clint goes on a solo mission a couple months in. He discovers he can breathe without Natasha again. He can sleep through a night- well, as much as an assassin can sleep through a night.

He can breathe without her, it doesn’t mean he wants to.

An unfamiliar voice is calling the shots, and Clint misses Coulson. 

When he gets back to the tower he doesn’t go to his suite, he goes to Natasha’s, and he crawls into bed on the far side and when she reaches out to run her fingertips down his back- his welcome home, he thinks- he doesn’t shy away.

 

She’s injured on an op two weeks later. Clint is there of course, he bandages her up and takes her back to HQ. They put her under anesthesia and she wakes up from it screaming in Russian.

Clint wakes up instantly, standing without even being aware that he’s doing so.

“I’m here, I’m here,” he says, and grabs her hand.

She clutches at it, staring at him. “I thought- I thought I was back in the Red Room,” she whispers, “I was going to kill them all.”

“It’s fine,” he says.

She nods, gulping. 

She’s under medical surveillance for several days, and Clint sleeps in the chair near the door, ready to protect her from anything. 

“Don’t we need to debrief with Coul-” Nat says one day and freezes, aware of her mistake.

Clint gives her a weak smile, and she turns away from him.

She doesn’t want him to see her cry. He touches her shoulder, but she doesn’t move. He doesn’t force it or push it, just sits at the edge of the bed and strokes her red hair, splaying it out on the pillow.

When she’s finished and she’s stared at the wall for what seems like an hour she sits up.

“He’s gone,” she says.

“Yes.”

“I’ve watched countless people die, I’ve killed hundreds. Why does this death that I didn’t even witness hurt so much?” 

This time, it’s Natasha who holds her arms out for an embrace. Clint gathers her up, and strokes her hair.

“It’s not fair,” she mumbles into her shirt.

“It’s not fair,” he agrees.

When they get back to the tower he sleeps on the side of the bed next to the door for a couple of weeks. 

When Tony enters unannounced he is unceremoniously pinned to the wall by Clint’s forearm, the other hand twirling a knife, ready to stick it into his ribs before Clint realizes it’s just Tony.

Tasha is already sitting up, twirling three separate weapons in her fingers.

“You should knock,” she says.

“Well, excuse me scissorhands, I just wanted to say breakfast was cancelled today. Darcy is hungover.”

“Get out,” Clint says, and Tony does.

Clint sits on the edge of the bed and holds his hand in his head. Tasha runs her finger through his hair hesitantly.

They’ve been touching much more lately.

 

Christmas sneaks up on them, Pepper has decorated the communal floor with a Christmas tree and lights. There’s mistletoe hanging from every doorway. Clint is cautious that he never gets stuck underneath the hanging plant.

But late one night, after everyone else has gone to bed and everything is quiet Clint finds himself passing through the doorway with Nat going the other way. She catches his arm and darts her eyes up to the mistletoe. Clint follows her gaze.

“It’s tradition,” she says, and then stands on her tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. 

She settles back down and heads into the kitchen. Clint watches her until she’s out of sight and he goes back to her room. 

It’s their first kiss that wasn’t done for an audience.

He gives Pepper a gold necklace that makes her tear up on Christmas morning. Clint knows she has no idea what he’s thanking her for, but that’s okay.

They spend New Year’s with the team. SHEILD tried to get them to do a publicity stunt, but Steve refused. 

They spend the night drinking outrageously expensive alcohol and watching the ball drop on Tony’s massive television.

Natasha has her head in Clint’s lap all night, and he slides his finger through her hair on more than one occasion. 

At midnight he leans down and kisses her on the lips. He’s kissed her before, but that was always for missions, when they have been posing as a couple. 

He hopes she knows that this kiss is not for the audience.

She smiles up at him and presses her cheek into his stomach. 

He thinks she knows. 

 

Loki is in their bedroom. Clint has his bow in one hand and is pulling the string back with the other. 

“You’re not going to shoot me,” Loki says with a twist to his mouth.

“Yes I am,” Clint says seriously, and releases the arrow. 

Loki rolls across the ground in a move that looks more Natasha-like than anything else. But Clint already has another arrow knocked and he shoots again, hitting him in the shoulder.

Loki barrels into him, and Clint falls to the ground, blinking several times.

Natasha is straddling him, an arrow sticking out of her shoulder.

“Nat?” he asks blankly.

“Are you awake now?” she asks.

“Yeah.”

She gets off of him and allows him to sit up, she looks down at the arrow in her shoulder. She sighs. 

“I’m going to be on bed rest for another two weeks because of this.”

“Sorry,” Clint says, staring at the arrow. He swallows. “I’m really sorry. God, Nat, I thought it was Loki, I thought he was here to take me again.”

She looks over at him. “That’s never going to happen,” she says firmly. “JARVIS? Where is Banner?”

“He is in the lab,” JARVIS returns in his smooth accent.

“Come on,” Natasha says, standing up. 

They walk to the lab, Clint apologizing until Natasha threatens to beat him up if he says another word. Even with an arrow in her shoulder he doesn’t doubt that she could have him on the floor within seconds.

Tony and Banner are hunched over a table in the lab. Steve is sitting on the couch, dozing. He was probably trying to get them to sleep, but that’s a lost cause when they start working on something.

Tony raises and eyebrow. 

“Role-playing gone wrong?” he asks with a tilt to his smile.

Steve wakes up, rubbing his eyes.

“Shut up, Tony,” Natasha says coolly. She wraps her fingers around Clint’s wrist so that he doesn’t punch him.

“Fine,” he hisses to her.

She smiles triumphantly at him.

Bruce just shakes his head and asks Natasha to sit down. “Steve will you get me the bandages?” He waves his hand over in the general direction of the storage room.

Steve returns a couple seconds later with the necessary items.

“Barton, can I talk to you?” he asks.

Clint internally sighs. They walk out into the hallway. 

“I thought it was Loki,” Clint mumbles, shoving his hands in his pocket.

Steve nods, looking thoughtful. “Is this going to be a problem?” he asks eventually.

Clint shakes his head. “No, sir.”

When Nat’s all fixed up they head back to the suite. Clint settles down on the couch, thinking that he should probably move back to his own unused suite in order to make sure this doesn’t happen again.

“What are you doing?” Natasha asks.

“Sleeping on the couch,” Clint answers, and really, isn’t it obvious?

She rolls her eyes and yanks on his collar, dragging him to the bedroom.

He pulls out the arrow that’s embedded in the wall, placing it back in his quiver. He slides into bed next to her, close to the door. 

“Why didn’t you just use a knife on me?” Clint asks her after a moment, when the darkness has surrounded them.

Tasha doesn’t say anything, but she does roll over and press her face into his shoulder. 

She doesn’t move for a long time, and when Clint slides his arm underneath her body and hooks his fingers around her waist she exhales contentedly. 

And that is answer enough.


End file.
